1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of event scheduling, and more particularly to a method, system, computer program product and apparatus for scheduling and executing events in real-time in a web environment and in similar environments.
2. Description of the Related Art
Systems today that feature event scheduling and triggering or firing require that an event be processed at a specific point in time throughout several computer applications. Some operating systems and programming languages have mechanisms that can schedule and trigger or fire such events and notify or launch software tasks when the event time arrives. All of these processes are machine specific in that the objects or tasks that are to be called back generally lie within the physical and unique environment of a particular machine. The callback or notification is always directly back to the process that has scheduled the event. If the scheduler on such a machine is currently busy or has become too busy to take on any additional workload, a newly scheduled event may not be handled properly.
There are several problems with such traditional event handling systems. First, they are not sufficiently and reliably available. Since the whole event scheduling and processing system is contained within a single machine, if that machine were to go off-line or down for any reason, then all of the event scheduling and processing is terminated until that machine is brought back online. Secondly, they are not readily scalable. If an increase in demand occurs beyond the capabilities of an individual machine, the entire machine may have to be replaced. And third, such systems are specific to particular operating systems having specific timers and schedulers and accordingly are not uniform over an enterprise that includes different types of machines having different operation systems.